Abilities

Skill name	Unlock requirement	Elemental runes	Effect runes
Experience 1	Level 1	1	0
Experience 2	Level 1	1	1
Experience 3	Level 10	1	2
Experience 4	Level 25	2	2
Experience 5	Level 50	3	2
Experience 6	Level 75	3	3
Experience 7	Level 100	3	4
Experience 8	N/A¹	4	4
Experience 9	N/A²	4	5
Experience 10	N/A³	5	5

Because of your battle experience, you now understand your own body and items well enough to be able to apply even more runes relatively⁴ safely, while keeping the side effects from doing so at a minimum. You and your own items will not feel Runic Overcharge from just a few elemental runes, though once you go past 4 elemental runes on yourself or 5 on your items, you will still receive the effects from Minor Runic Overcharge.

Lunacy

Unlock : Level 25

Power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Scripts are power, and you are weak : whenever you start applying scripts on your body, the rush of power coursing through your veins will be enough to make you completely lose track of the escalating side effects of this. This ability also makes it so you can never⁵ die from the side effects of your own scripts, however, the aftermath⁶ of the effects still can.

Actives

Papermaking

Unlock : Level 1

A simple but essential skill for every paladin : the ability to create script paper from wood. Remove a tree’s bark and cut down small paper-thin rectangular-shaped pieces of wood, creating 5 pieces of script paper per turn.

Inscription

Unlock : Level 1

The first skill any paladin ever learns to use : the ability to write down any single runeword into something. Though quite weak on its own, this skill takes on a new shape when used in conjuncture with Rune Crafting.

Rune Crafting

Unlock : Level 1

Write a sequence of runewords. Runes activate once they lose contact with whoever wrote them for a few seconds or whenever the writer wants to activate them. They generally last 5 turns.

Only the first rune carved into an item⁷ will function⁸.

Writing a runeword takes one turn; however, this can be done while walking around, talking with people, etc. (though not while fighting). The number of runewords you can add to a single rune depends on the level of your Experience skill. Any stat or level checks relating to runes are done when the rune is used rather than created. When multiple elements are used in a sequence, the effects will be a mix of all the used elements⁹.

The main effect of an enchantment is defined by the first effect runeword used in the rune.

The following section presents some basic runewords and limits to the use of runes.

Runic Overcharge

It should be noted that every rune, even safe or helpful ones like Restore-Fire, still function by creating elemental magic, as such, using high quantities of them will lead to harm.

Minor Runic Overcharge

Anyone affected by more than 2 elemental runewords (unless protected by Battle Experience or Lunacy) will start to take (CRA + LVL * 5) * (Number of elemental runeword) direct (100% piercing) damage per turn.

Anything affected by more than 3 elemental runewords (unless protected by Battle Experience) will degrade over time.

Major Runic Overcharge

Anyone affected by more than 4 elemental runewords will start to take (2 * CRA + LVL * 10) * (Number of elemental runeword) direct (100% piercing) damage per turn. Those protected by Battle Experience or Lunacy will instead take (CRA + LVL * 5) * (Number of elemental runeword) damage.

Anything affected by more than 5 elemental runewords will start to immediately break down. Those protected by Battle Experience will instead have their weapon start to degrade over time at this point.

`Power` / `Empower`

Causes the affected item (or creature) to deal an additional ER * (CRA + LVL * 5) elemental damage per attack, where ER is the number of Elemental Runewords which are part of the rune.

`Defend`

Causes the affected item (or creature) to have an additional ER * (CRA + LVL * 5) defense in the form of whatever element(s) is/are used in the rune.

`Protect`

Causes the affected item (or creature) to have an additional (ER * 20)% (up to 60%) resistance against whatever element(s) is/are used in the rune.

Protect also has the secondary effect of protecting whatever the rune is sticking to from the effects of the rune itself.

`Restore`

If used on an item, it causes the affected item to be repaired (proportionally to the ER) over time for 5 turns.

If used on a creature, heals the affected creature for ER * (2 * CRA + LVL * 10); though this rune does also quickly work to undo physical harm to its target.

Other

Here are some other useful basic, but simpler to understand, effect runewords :

Spread causes its elements and effects to spread;

Destroy causes physical damage to whatever it is on;

Delay delays the rune’s activation by 2 turns;

Create simply causes its elements to manifest in condensed balls;

Launch violently sends out its elements at random;

Experimentation

Unlock : Level 10

Push past your brain’s limits and try to go past your current level of Experience for one turn. This skill can only be used on runes you have written which are currently as long as you can make them with your current level of Experience.

Using it will allow you to try and add an additional runeword of the type associated with the following level of Experience (or of any type if you are also using Unholy Designation).For this to succeed, you have to successfully get an even result on a D4 throw : if the result is odd the rune will be ruined and cease to function instead, at least, after having broken a rune, you gain the “Catharsis” effect, making it so your next failed Experimentation turns into a success.

Unholy Designation

Unlock : Level 25

Eureka! Why even bother trying to make stable sequences of runes when you can simply just not do it instead? Write down unstable sequences of runes which replace runes of one type with those of another! This means that, if you have the skill “Experience 3”, instead of being able to write a sequence containing 1 elemental rune and 2 effect runes, you could write 3 elemental runes, or 2 elemental runes and 1 effect runes. These sequences are “unstable” because they are extremely hard to make : they take two turns per runeword you write instead of one and they are impossible to write while walking around or talking. Losing focus while writing an unstable sequence will instantly break the entire sequence and cause it to instantly activate¹⁰.

Divine catharsis

Unlock : Level 50

You only get the choice to use this ability once, if you miss that occasion, you will never be able to use this skill again. This choice comes the first time you are level 50 outside of an encounter and at 100% health.

Your character receives a divine revelation (or rather, a severe lapse in judgement). The reason why you are unable to enhance yourself with runes at your heart’s content is not because runes will eventually end you, but because your body will eventually end your runes! Flesh is weak and the only way forward is to replace this weakness with strength!

“Purge” your own body of its weakness, writing runes onto different parts of your own body directly instead of relying on scripts to enchant yourself. If you succeed in “purging” yourself, you will achieve one of five stages: “Exterior Cleansing”; “Expurgation”; “Angelic Might”; “Transcendence”; or “True Devotion”. You are unallowed to receive any help during this process¹¹, or else you would be admitting the insufficiency of runes, proving their weakness, and making this whole endeavor pointless in the end… Depending on what tier you hope to achieve, how you go about it, and how much you prepared for this, this process can take anything from a day to a whole week. Note that being underprepared for this can easily lead to the death of a character (whose, let us remember, level 50!) and you should only ever consider using this skill if you have carefully been preparing for it¹². This skill can be used on a specific body part or on your whole body, though the strength of the effects will vary immensely depending how much of your body you drew runes onto¹³.


`Exterior Cleansing`	You have written runes onto your skin. You will now have some minor permanent benefits¹⁴ relating to the type of runes you decided to write.
`Expurgation`	You have written runes on not only your skin, but also under it, on your flesh, and major veins. You can start to feel power coursing through your entire body. You will gain permanent buffs depending on the types of runes you wrote.
`Angelic Might`	Deeper still, you have been able to leave magic marks onto your muscles and everything above them. True strength is now yours. Your body will not only gain noticeable permanent benefits relating to the type of runes you wrote¹⁵, but this benefit will also temporarily grow whenever you start sticking runes onto yourself.
`Transcendence`	You have enchanted your skin, flesh, muscles, and now your bones. Your body’s basic functions will start to be affected by the type of runes you wrote¹⁶, these effects will also grow whenever you apply runes of the same element on yourself. On a sidenote, you also had to tear off your nerves and can no longer feel a thing! But this is simply the cost of power : you will now be able to regenerate physical wounds simply by being surrounded by the concepts your elemental runes represent¹⁷.
`True devotion`	You almost assuredly cannot be described as whatever race you were at the beginning of the process. Almost nothing (or literally nothing) was left untouched, every nook and cranny¹⁸ of your body was enchanted, this also includes most (or all) of your major organs like your heart, lungs, eyes, stomach, bladder, etc. Your body has become so close to whatever element the runes you inscribed in yourself were, it will start visibly regenerating the instant it comes in contact with its element, which is convenient considering you also now emanate enough elemental magic to not only passively affect yourself, but everything in your surroundings too¹⁹. You will be able to release elements in a way comparable in scale to tier 4 magic²⁰, while also being able to manipulate elements even better than most tier 5 mages can. However, power comes at a price, your body has become so reliant on magic that any anti-magic item will cause you serious injury, it is also so abnormal that it has lost the capacity to repair itself, meaning you will no longer be able to have any natural health regeneration²¹. Depending on how far you went, this is one way to become a fully-fledge elemental²² ²³.

An Elementary Theory of Everything

Unlock : Level 100
Channel time : 20 turns²⁴

You only get the choice to use this ability once, if you miss that occasion, you will never be able to use this skill again. This choice comes the first time you are level 100, outside of an encounter and are at 100% health.

You feel indescribable sort of inspiration, allowing to write a Theory of (Element) in your own blood. Theory of (Element)s are books containing every bit of knowledge and experience a certain individual on the level of a god has been able to acquire over the course of their life in relation to one specific element, being in possession of such a book increases the potency of every effect related to this element by 50%²⁵, however, getting the spark of inspiration required to write one requires you to fully devote yourself to the element you’ll be writing about, meaning you will no longer be allowed to use skills related to any other elements.

Experience 8 can only be used once after successfully using Experimentation after having used Experience 7. ↩
Experience 9 can only be used once after successfully using Experimentation after having used Experience 8. ↩
Experience 10 can only be used once after successfully using Experimentation after having used Experience 9. ↩
Obviously, sticking magic paper that generally makes stuff catch on fire on your body still isn’t the smartest idea, but at least you can now do it without starting to immediately burn or die. ↩
N E V E R, you could literally be burning bones, as long as you don’t get hit once by anything else, you will stay alive, this protection works against death related to both physical injuries and health loss. ↩
If we go back to our example of a burning skeleton, you would then die the moment you stopped burning. ↩
An item here would be a single a continuous object : thus, while you can only enchant a sword once, you can enchant strips of paper and attach them to a sword so that they share their enchantment with the sword as many times as you like. ↩
So, if you decide to carve a rune into a sword, the rune would only last 5 turns once activated and once it ends, you wouldn’t be able to carve any more functional runes into that sword, but you would still be able to stick scripts on which runes have been carved, because the sword is only getting shared benefits from the script’s own rune. ↩
For instance : Ice-Fire would produce steam and Empower-Nature-Earth would give bonus earth and nature elemental damage. ↩
Because of this reason, it is highly recommended to add at least one Delay rune to unstable sequences that use a lot of elemental runes for your own safety. ↩
This includes getting buffed or healed by anyone other than yourself. ↩
This can be done by doing things such as making weak runes to activate Lunacy to ignore the pain you are causing yourself while writing runes in yourself, stacking up on healing potions or runes beforehand, making sure you get the revelation in a safe and sanitary area, learning about biology, having ways to stop you from bleeding, having artificial ways to stay alive, etc. ↩
So, while a Transcendent left arm might be able to instantly freeze anything it touches, having Transcendence over your entire body could allow you to instantly freeze everything within a one-meter radius of things you touch. ↩
This can be the ability to start fires on your body, reducing a certain type of damage, giving slight defense, or some other minor buffs. ↩
From this point on, you won’t only get very minor permanent effects with more noticeable effects that you have to focus to activate, but proper permanent elemental magic coming out of your body at all times, though at this tier, it will be simple things such as constantly emanating heat, or making flowers grow wherever you walk, with active effects (that you have to focus to use) that will encompass your entire body. ↩
Even simple movement will cause major elemental magic to come off your body, wind runes could allow you permanently float and use wind pressure rather than your own body to touch things, chaos runes could allow you to permanently be invisible, light runes could make you blind anyone who looks at you, earth runes could turn your skin into actual metal, etc. ↩
So jumping in fire would repair the parts of your body you enchanted if you wrote a type of fire rune on yourself. ↩
This includes the inside of your mouth, your ears, your skull (as in the bone), your spine, your “crotch”, etc. ↩
This gives you 10% permanent health regeneration as well as insane physical injury regeneration. This regeneration can be halved, for instance, if a fire paladin was walking alongside a frozen mountain, or doubled, if the same fire paladin would be walking next to a volcano. ↩
Though the scale (as in, size) is comparable, you will not be able to start casting tier 4 magic at no cost. ↩
This obviously excludes the regeneration stemming from being around your element. ↩
Elementals are magical creatures who literally represent one of the elements, they can freely and completely manipulate them without the need for things like mana. ↩
This would happen if you drew runes absolutely everywhere, except your brain, which is almost assured to kill you. ↩
These turns do not have to be consecutive. ↩
You cannot stack the effect of multiple books of the same element. ↩

Nazarax